12th
century Jurists wrote extensively of the powers of the Papacy and the King.

What
happened is that the papacy was vicarius fili dei on earth for heavenly matters
and the king was vicarius fili dei on earth for earthly matters. This principle
was already recognized strongly in the Justinian debates with popes around
533-538 CE. The abdication of politics by Justinian in 538 CE (see his coin
removing military images replacing it with the emperor theologian in that year)
was the start of the supremacy of the papacy because the earthly powers cannot
usurp the exclusive powers of the papacy with heavenly matters. So they
reasoned.

So
definition back and forth of princeps was certainly entertained sporadic here
and there with conflicts but it was in the 12th century that they
discussed and defined the powers of both.

What the
emperor had as power was conferred on the king, why, because the emperor was
already under the umbrella of the papacy and thus any king should stand in the same
shoes as the emperor to also be found under this papacy umbrella.

The power of
the papacy was viewed high by Pope Innocent III in 1200 who deemed the pope as
the verus imperator. Because the pope could claim he was the Vicarius filii dei
or as Ashceri has it, the vicarius dei, he was seen as the true princeps rather
than the kings (Ascheri 2018: 48).

From 1250
King Frederick II caused discussions on the role of natural law as opposed to
sacred law and these discussions were under the umbrella of “rule of law”
theorizings (Ascheri 2018: 49).

After
Frederick II’s death the principes of king was absent for many years so city
states gained the power. Much were written on the power of the municipalities
then.

Consequently
Thomas Aquinas wrote on the Christian duties of both the principes and the
principatus.

A scholar
Marsilius wrote with positivism on the rule of law at that time. His writings
were condemned by the church and papacy (Ascheri 2018: 50).

The principes
of kings and emperors continued while pope Boniface VIII issued his papal Bull
called Unam Sanctam which “reaffirmed the traditional papal principle of the ecclesiastical
sovereignty termed as ‘hierocracy’” (Ascheri 2018: 50).

Thus he
considered the principes as obligated to obey all Christian rules as
established by the Holy See13. (Ascheri 2018 citing Di Paolo, 2008).

The work of
Bartolus de Saxoferrato in 1357 became a beacon of a seesaw fight between the
power of the king and that of the city people group that started in those days.
Of course over all of them was the power of the papacy (Ascheri 2018: 52) “And the
hierocratic notion, affording to the Pope as God’s vicar the primacy of all
powers both temporal and spiritual, always prevailed above both.” Even today
there are the row between nations and powers back and forth with differences
but they all run to the papacy to acclaim his vicarius filii dei recognition.
Even Trump who is Jewish inclined as President of the USA.

In 1383 John
of Legnato wrote a work Somnium in which it was claimed that the French monarch
is was the central vicarius dei (Archeri 2018: 53). Archeri considered the text
“bizarre”. Considering who pays for Archeri his salary, one can expect this
comment of his. It clash with the role of the papacy as vicarius filii dei to
say that. It became known in French as the Songe du Vergier. “

“…the king
alone was the center of the work, extolled as princeps vicarius Dei in
temporalibus like the Emperor and, for that reason, invited to be careful that
the Church not encroach upon his jurisdiction.”

This was in
the French edition but in Legnato writing he said: “In the

writings of
Legnano, however, the true and supreme princeps was the Pope who was to be
assisted by the canonica sapientia and the civilis sapientia of jurists. The
trouble with this was that it impeded the priests from assembling” (Ascheri
2018: 53). Legnato still kept the papacy as the true and supreme princeps and
vicarius filii dei of heavenly matters reigned over everything else. This
recognition is also currently the populist feeling of countries and nations and
thus we have a healing of the deadly wound of Revelation 13, the first beast
exactly this power at play in the description of Ascheri in the Middle Ages and
the wound healed as the current worldly display of recognition, even five USA presidents
at the funeral of pope John Paul II.